Announcement2018 Ubers Tournament Circuit Schedule

Late to the party, but better late than never. We are happy to announce what our 2018 tournament schedule will be for Ubers! This year's format will aim to give points based on the performance of users throughout our individual tournaments during this year, with it all coming together for a "Championship" playoffs to decide who is the best and most consistent Ubers player of 2018. The winner will be able to proudly display the ribbon for Smogon Metagames on their badgeset, along with specific hover text to note the tier circuit win that earned it to showcase their big achievement as an Ubers player!​

The final tournament, the Ubers Championship I, will take the points earned from all of the previous tournaments of the 2018 year and have a playoffs to determine who wins the ribbon!
The points system is explained in this post.

Seasonals and Ubers Open will be Type A tournaments. The Ubers Pentathlon features the 5 most recent generations, and will therefore be Type B. Older generation tournaments such as the annual ADV tournament and individual Cups for Ubers Classic will be classed as Type B as well. The Ubers Classic II will not feature a playoffs stage, unlike its first edition.

* These tournaments will NOT count towards the Ubers Ribbon due to their format either being an inclusive team tournament or a unique format.​

I've had some thoughts and after talking with folks I have decided to switch up our circuit and how it is treated:

Old generation tournaments will all be regarded as Type B. This means the Ubers Classic will be changed accordingly. Luckily, no past tournaments are impacted, so this is a safe move.

Type C tournaments will now be regarded as the "gimmicky" tournaments. Tournaments that differ a lot from standard play by banning a specific thing, playing in an unusual way, etc will be seen as Type C. This means there currently aren't any, but my next point should offer room for such a thing. Previously, gimmicky tournaments were seen as ineligible for points.

I am also removing the requirement that a tournament must be announced months in advance. While the intention was to ensure there was fair warning for every tournament eligible for points, Smogon's culture seems too "short-term" to warrant such a long waiting period for people to suggest worthwhile tournaments. I'm under the impression nobody prepares their lives for a tournament that far ahead, so this rule likely hurts more than it helps. Note: New Type A tournaments will still require a little bit of warning, because they are the major point earners of the circuit. It isn't too likely any will be added, but I'm leaving the option open because our future tiering actions may open up more frequent USM tournaments.

edit: The Annual ADV Ubers Tournament will be removed after talking with its usual host Minority. It is rather close in both date and function to warrant having two ADV tours. He will host the ADV Cup during the Ubers Classic instead.

I'm aware many people will be confused why some average player like me is so high up with just one tour, so let me give you a simple answer and another detailed answer.

Simple: the points total is not just of your performance across all tours, but is an equivalent score relative to whoever has the highest sum. This is done separately for Type A and Type B tours, and evens out after a few tours. At the end of this circuit year, there would have been 4 Type A (3 Seasonals and 1 Open) and 5 Type B (Pentathlon and 4 Cups), and the points from those will be counted to reach a total for each player. The player who has the highest points in Type A then has 2500 equivalent points, and everyone else has their points calculated with respect to the top guy. Same method is followed for Type B, with the top equivalent being 1700 points. The equivalent points from both the types are then added to get the actual score which is used in grading.

Now to address the issue of p2 and me being ranked so well with just the Pentathlon performance to show for.

While there have been 3 Type A tours so far, 4th one going on, only 1 Type B tour has been completed. This means that the highest total from Type B tours comes from that single event, and thus those who did well in Pentathlon are ranked considerably higher even though their performance seems to pale in comparison to making say top 8 in a Seasonal. If I were to take only one Seasonal's performance for Type A, a similar thing would happen. So this isn't fraudulent math, it's just the lack of other Type B tours so far. This will even out after the Classic ends, and the events will be noticeable even after the end of just the first Cup(ORAS).

The Ubers Championship is about a month away and here is a quick announcement post on how it will play out. This has been decided for quite a while now but never properly publicised, so this is an alert to those in qualifying contention if they didn't know already.

Ubers Championship I will be a best out of 5 format, with the first game starting in USM Ubers. The loser of that match will then decide on a generation (ADV-USM) to play game 2 on, and so forth. This allows old gens to feature in the fight for the Ubers Ribbon itself as they featured a fair amount in the qualifying stages throughout the year.

With the first game being USM, a player that only had a USM focus is not at any severe disadvantage by completely ignoring old Ubers generations, because they can continue to pick USM on losses and come out with a 3-2 win. Versatility is still greatly rewarded in the Ubers circuit, and old generation focused players can choose to opt into a series based on their strengths if they both want to with this format.

Ubers celebrates our older generations more than the other main tiers, and this championship will be reflective of that.